Proving Grounds are new solo challenges in Patch 5.4 that both allow new players to learn a new role in a comfortable setting, or seasoned players to try something difficult and competitive.

This guide will help you get through challenges for each role and covers the following:

Rewards for beating various difficulties.

Rules to keep in mind for gear scaling and instance buffs.

Bestiary details for tank, healer, and dps challenges.

Detailed breakdowns of all waves on Gold and Endless, including some charts and videos.

The detailed strategy and bestiary sections were written experienced players of each role who spent substantial time testing Proving Grounds on the PTR:DPS: Esoth is a hunter in <Something Wicked> on Whisperwind, where he's been doing 25-man heroic progression raiding since Wrath of the Lich King. He writes the Survival Hunter thread on Elitist Jerks and maintains other WoW tracking projects on his personal blog, [url=http://www.

Our Timeless Isle guide covers all the BoA gear, achievements, rare spawns, and vanity items in this innovative new zone designed to keep players busy when they're not raiding. In a radical departure from previous content, this zone isn't tied to daily quests or grinding out Valor Points. Instead, players can kill numerous rare spawns for vanity items, collect Timeless Coin for unique items, stumble across secret events, and loot BoA epics for their alts.

This zone is a bit more free-form than past zones we've covered like our Isle of Thunder Content Guide, but we've broken down the available content into the following components for our guide:

BoA Epics: Players can loot BoA armor tokens, which can be mailed to alts and turned into ilvl 496 gear based on their loot specialization. These can be turned into ilvl 535 epics in rare circumstances, and some gear has unique transmog looks.Rare Spawns and Events: The Timeless Isle is teeming with rare spawns of all difficulties, as well as daily and weekly events that are fun minigames.V

Patch 5.4 goes live on September 10th and we've got you covered so you can kill Garrosh in the Siege of Orgrimmar and get some epics in style! The Alliance and Horde have had enough of Garrosh's poor leadership and are storming the gates of Orgrimmar.

Besides a new 14-boss raid with a new mode of difficulty, Flex Mode, players can explore the Timeless Isle for vanity items and BoA epics. Plus, there's a new PvP season and players can finally finish their legendary questline to get a powerful cape!

We've got summaries of all the new content below, as well as links to blue posts and Wowhead's comprehensive PTR coverage.

Patch Notes and Overview

Players can finally kill Garrosh in the new raid, Siege of Orgrimmar. There are 14 bosses and LFR loot is ilvl 528, Flex 540, Normal 553, and Heroic 566.Flex mode is a new raid type, in which players form a raid with 10-25 players and the bosses' health and damage will scale up or down. The difficulty is easier than Normal, but as it's intended to reward players for social interactions ins

Community manager Lore has made a Patch 5.4 Overview video so you don't lose track of the major features coming tomorrow!

We'll be getting our own Patch 5.4 guide up later today as well, but for now, enjoy Blizzard's video:

Lore

We’re adding a lot of new content in Patch 5.4—so much, in fact, that we couldn’t blame you if some of the biggest new additions managed to slip under your radar. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got you covered with this short video overview of Siege of Orgrimmar. Now there’s no reason to feel left out in the cold. Sit back, relax, and let Community Manager Lore guide you through several of the hottest new features coming in Patch 5.4.

The 5.4 PTR Patch Notes were updated recently--we don't have much time left before 5.4 hits, so these are pretty close to final. To learn what you can do this week to prep for the patch, check out our Patch 5.4 Prep Guide.

Here's what's new to the notes:

A section about the Siege of Orgrimmar has been added, with details on the raid difficulties and raid schedule.

Several heals now function like smart heals, in which the 6 most injured friendly targets within range are healed, and minor guardians are no longer targeted. Affected heals are Healing Rain, , , Light's Hammer, and Spinning Crane Kick.

Blizzard just posted details on the Siege of Orgrimmar raid schedule for LFR, Flex, Normal and Heroic difficulty--something many users were curious about on our popular 5.4 Preparation Guide from yesterday. The first wing of Flex will open on launch, September 10th, while the first wing of LFR (required item level 496) will be delayed a week.

Patch 5.4 is a week away, so today we're taking a look at things you can do to prepare for the patch--from saving your Valor Points to finishing up Battlefield Barrens! Next week we will publish our Patch 5.4 guide to all the new content, but for now we're just focusing on the changes that can impact how you play the week before.

Olivia from Talk Azeroth covers everything you can do to prepare this week in her most recent show as well:

Existing Gear Changes

In Patch 5.4, all reputation gear tied to MoP factions (except for Shado-Pan Assault) will cost Justice Points instead of Valor Points and the reputation requirements will be lifted--so if you hate grinding reps and are short on VP, just wait a week to buy those items.

Shado-Pan Assault gear will still cost Valor Points in 5.4, but heavily discounted, so it's probably best to wait and buy those items when the patch hits. Shoulders are unaffected, as they cost gold.

Item upgrades aren't going away in 5.4--if you're not sure what to do this week, upgrade your best pieces with Valor this week, and buy the cheaper Shado-Pan Assault

Capes are the bane of transmogrification. There's so many options, they're never designed to match specific tier, and some of them cut into your cool weapons. Although there's a "show/hide cloak" option, hiding it is the easy way out.

With this guide, you can find the perfect cape to match the removed ones from Trial of the Grand Crusader, a crafted cape that's identical to a raid epic you've never seen, a completely unique model from a quest reward, or even a blue-quality version of your favorite tattered grey cape.

This guide is an update of our popular cape guide from Cataclysm--we've improved on it by not only organizing capes by style and length, but also by color! (Click on the toggle to view all capes of a certain color and their sources.)

If you have your legendary cape already and can't transmog your cape anymore, check out our other guides to armor transmog:

Classes

Howling Blast: Blast the target with a frigid wind, dealing 648573 + (Attack power * 0.738)))] Frost damage to that foe, and 648573 + (Attack power * 0.738))))] Frost damage to all other enemies within 10 yards, infecting all targets with Frost Fever.